I knew that Without Warning was going to be my next movie in my alien encounters themed week as soon as I saw the cover for it on Shudder. I knew absolutely nothing about the movie coming going in and that kinda made the movie even better. Seeing Martin Landau, Jack Palance, and a young David Caruso in the same movie was a hell of a surprise. I didn’t even realize that it came out in the early 80s.
Without Warning was directed by Greydon Clark and written by Lyn Freeman, Daniel Grodnik, Steve Mathis, and Bennett Tramer under the name Ben Nett. Tramer used the pseudonym because he was trying to become a comedy writer and thought having a horror credit would work against him. The fact that there are so many writers listed for the movie had me worried when I saw them during the credits, but my worries were baseless. It blew my mind at the parallels between this and Predator I even had to make sure of when this movie came out. Clark made the most out of what he had but with cinematography by Dean Cundey he had plenty to work with.
Without Warning was Tarah Nutter and Christopher S. Nelson’s movie. You are with both of them for almost the entire movie. Nutter had to do some heavy duty acting throughout the movie. Both Palance and Landau show their screen presence with Palance even being a little bit of a red herring with his more sinister demeanor. Landau’s performance goes in the exact opposite direction initially being helpful then turning sinister.
The effects in Without Warning are really good. The alien in the movie is a much more terrifying version of the traditional grey alien. The fact that it was played by the same actor who would go on to play the Predator in the movie Predator adds to the weirdness to me. The effects for the alien weapons are gruesome. They’re probably the biggest surprise to me of the entire movie. The music from Dan Wyman is good. The score adds an extra bit of creepiness to the entire movie.
Without Warning is a movie I had never heard of before watching it but seemed to be a heavy influence on Predator. I’m a huge fan of Without Warning after watching it. This accidental theme week has ended up being a gift in disguise with me finding several movies that I’ve never seen that I enjoy. You can stream the movie on Shudder. I give Without Warning 9 bundles of dynamite out of 10.